ESR Dating Ungulate Tooth Enamel at Pešturina, Serbia: The Lumpiness Factor

Summary

Sitting on a major mammalian migration route from Asia into Europe, Pešturina contains at least four archaeological layers, including Aurignacian, Denticulate and Charentian Mousterian. A series of matrix-supported silty conglomerates hold five recognizable archaeologically and geologically distinct layers. All the layers contain éboulis clasts ranging from silt-sized grains to > 1 m3. Skeletal remains, including teeth, from Late Pleistocene herbivores occur associated with Paleolithic artefacts in all layers. A roof collapse forms the base of the currently excavated test pits. From the Mousterian layers, 39 enamel subsamples from 11 ungulate teeth were independently dated with standard ESR, using a four-component volumetric dose averaging model. Since the teeth contain almost no U, the dates are independent of the U uptake model selected for the age calculation. Although one tooth was reworked into Layer 4, most teeth appear to be stratigraphic succession and likely date the layers in which they occurred. Since Layer 3, which contains a Denticulate Mousterian assemblage, dates to 39 ± 3 ka and correlates with MIS 3. Layer 4 with Charentian Mousterian dates to MIS 5. Thus, humans using the Mousterian had arrived near the Sićevo Gorge by MIS 5 and persisted there until at least 39 ka.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage